To: Don Martini who wrote (62197 ) 8/30/1998 12:44:00 PM From: Mohan Marette Respond to
Freakish Friday- Where do we stand????ARD HOEY, EQUITY RESEARCH DIRECTOR, DREYFUS: Basically what happened was we had a default in Russia causing two things to happen. One, the hedge funds and other investors who lost big money in Russia, sold other assets in order to get liquid or to meet margin calls. The second thing is, that there was a downward adjustment in expectations about how strong the world economy would be, and therefore how strong corporate profits would be.ere is no sign of panic among individual investors. Mutual fund reports on equity flows are mixed, although most say new money is most often going into fixed income and money market funds, rather than equities. Most technical trading signals indicate the market is ready to make a bottom. RLES BLOOD, MARKET STRATEGIST, BROWN BROTHERS HARRIMAN:see lots of signs that the stock market is ready to make a bottom in here. It's very over sold. Traded volume is very heavy. Sentiment is quite, quite bearish. People are really getting a little scared here. And that's actually a good sign, because that's what tends to happen near bottoms. GURVEY: The problem with this standard analysis is that this downturn has not been caused by standard events. It has been triggered more by external and political events, than by domestic economic issues. And that means the sign the correction may have run its course, may not be correct. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.
